The MVHS Wellness Committee, a component of the ASB Activities class, spearheaded its first speaker event on Tuesday, Nov. 15 in the theater. Gunn High School teacher Ronen Habib and Stanford psychology graduate student Kari Leibowitz spoke to students and parents about happiness and stress.

Habib teaches positive psychology at Gunn High School and is the founder of EQ Schools, a company that brings mindfulness, emotional intelligence, and positive psychology teaching to students and educators.

“Three years into my teaching career, and I felt really burned out. I felt that many kids were studying for the grades, not for studying or for learning’s sake. I had some really intense conversations with parents in Palo Alto and it was hard. I began to kind of lose touch with the kids that I was teaching, and one day, I had a wakeup call,” Habib said.

This wakeup call came in the form of a 7am staff meeting in the Gunn High School auditorium, where teachers were notified that a student had committed suicide earlier that morning. The student, Habib quickly realized, was one of his own. After Habib spoke at the student’s funeral, he made a personal vow to be more consciously aware of his students’ emotional health and well-being, he said.

The vast majority of us go about life mindlessly. We eat mindlessly, drive mindlessly, and even speak to our parents and kids mindlessly. We grade homework mindlessly and do homework mindlessly. If we’re able to be mindful even a bit more, we’re able to live life a bit more.

After speaking at multiple positive psychology trainings in the Bay Area, Habib realized that students, parents, and teachers in the Silicon Valley area are often fixated on the same goal: success. While multiple studies have indeed shown a correlation between success and happiness, Habib noted that success only leads to “short-term” happiness.

“With success comes prestige and status. It feels good. People see you as smart and successful; even money is a long-term factor. People eventually come to the conclusion that success makes you feel happy. You get an A on a test or you get a raise, and sure, you feel great. But for how long? Only before you have to get back on the grind again, and get that next A or that next raise,” Habib said.

Instead, Habib flips the equation to one supported by research. Instead of success leading to happiness, he notes that, more often, happiness leads to success. He said that authentic happiness is derived from just three things: play, mindfulness, and relationships.

“Invest in Play. Ideally, in-person-play. As much as you can, engage in games with other people. When people play together, they learn and work better together. Why is this important? Because when we play, we’re present and we’re focused,” Habib said.

Play, it turns out, isn’t only for young children on the playground. It releases the neurochemical, oxytocin, which makes us feel loved and connected. Playing increases creativity, empathy, and grit, while making us more emotionally and socially attuned.

Habib’s second recommendation to finding authentic happiness is mindfulness, or the act of being aware and attentive to events happening in the present moment. Mindfulness helps establish peace and focus, and is proven to reduce anxiety. Apps like Calm and Mind Jogger can bring mindfulness to the forefront of daily life by reminding you to breath and leading guided meditation.

HABIB (left) and LEIBOWITZ (right): Spoke at ASB wellness event

“The vast majority of us go about life mindlessly. We eat mindlessly, drive mindlessly, and even speak to our parents and kids mindlessly. We grade homework mindlessly and do homework mindlessly,” Habib said. “If we’re able to be mindful even a bit more, we’re able to live life a bit more.”

Most importantly, Habib believes that investing in relationships will lead to authentic happiness.

“We’re neurobiologically hardwired to need to feel like we are loved, like we belong, and like we’re connected to others. Who you hang out with, how much support you feel from them, and how much support you give them is a major indicator of happiness.,” Habib said.

The second wellness speaker, Leibowitz, is a current Stanford graduate student who is working on her PhD in social psychology. Leibowitz became interested in the idea that our mindsets are constantly influencing our well-being. Alongside her Stanford advisor, she is studying how our beliefs of stress influence our physical experience of it.

“There are two incorrect assumptions about stress,” Leibowitz said. “The first is that the effects of stress are only negative. The second is that our goal should be to avoid, manage, or counteract the events of stress.”

While stress is pegged by the media as being an epidemic and one of America’s leading health problems, Leibowitz argues that it would be impossible to reach our goals without it. Stress, which is the sixth leading cause of death in the U.S., is actually dual in nature. If a person can change their belief about stress and view it as motivation, they can channel it towards productivity and success.

“So, you might ask, what’s the distinguishing factor? What makes it so stress can be a good thing, rather than a bad thing? I’d like to argue that our beliefs play an extremely critical role in whether stress can be good or bad for us,” Leibowitz said.

Leibowitz’s advisor tested this hypothesis during an experiment in which two groups of people were exposed to just one belief about stress. One group was told that stress was deteriorating, and should be managed and avoided. The second group was advised that stress is beneficial, and was designed to protect us and help us grow.

There are two incorrect assumptions about stress. The first is that the effects of stress are only negative. The second is that our goal should be to avoid, manage, or counteract the events of stress.

“The study revealed that people who were exposed to the idea that stress was beneficial had fewer negative health symptoms, better work performance, and improved life satisfaction,” Leibowitz said. “When you think about it, more millionaires were created during the Great Depression then during any other period in history. What does that say about stress?”

Leibowitz believes that stress is enhancing, and should be utilized and enjoyed. She developed a three-step solution to using stress for your benefit.

“See it, own it, use it. First, acknowledge the stressor. Second, tell yourself that it’s ok to be stressed, because it means you care about something. See it as an opportunity to connect with your values and the things that you care about and why you care about them. And lastly, use it. Stress is designed to facilitate,” Leibowitz said.

She encourages us to confront our stressor by asking ourselves: Is my reaction to this stress really reflecting my purpose? Is everything I’m doing in line with my goals? After all, she says, it’s important to be more deliberate with our response to stress if we want to succeed in the long-run.

“It’s not about denying potentially harmful aspects of stress or thinking that stress is necessarily a good thing. Our beliefs really help shape what our experience to stress is like. Recognizing the power of these beliefs to orient or frame our experiences. It’s about learning to stress better. Avoids feeling stressed about stress,” Leibowitz said.

]]>http://mvhsoracle.com/daily-broadcasts/wednesday-december-7-2016/feed0AP Macroeconomics and Government: a year laterhttp://mvhsoracle.com/features/ap-macroeconomics-and-government-a-year-later
http://mvhsoracle.com/features/ap-macroeconomics-and-government-a-year-later#respondTue, 06 Dec 2016 03:46:29 +0000http://mvhsoracle.com/?p=8650The AP Macroeconomics and U.S. Government (APEG) class, a fast-paced social science course for seniors, launched at MVHS for the 2015-16 school year as the advanced placement counterpart to the Economics and Civics course.

The first semester of Macroeconomics is graph-heavy and covers basic macroeconomic concepts from measurements of the economy to fiscal and monetary policy in foreign exchange.

The second semester covers U.S. Government and Politics. This portion of the class provides an in-depth study of the structures of the American government system, policy outcomes, and how both reflect the U.S. Constitution, introducing students to historical and modern political jargon.

The class is primarily taught through interactive lectures and inquiry-based learning.

As a combination course, APEG uses two AP textbooks, one for each semester, and prepares students for two separate AP tests at the end of the year.

The school board decided to offer APEG at MVHS after students voiced interest in taking the course.

“Most of those students fell into top 5%,” said Felitia Hancock, one of the APEG teachers. “I think the school board was interested in honoring student choice if they wanted to take AP for Econ/Civics. [I think it was] also driven by the perception that the more APs you take, the more competitive you are for college admission.”

According to Hancock, the social sciences department was originally not in favor of offering APEG.

“When students originally come in [freshman year], [everyone]takes World Studies in heterogeneous groups,” Hancock said. “Then, students self-select, and the self-selection has traditionally seen a split that mirrors the racial/economic split. AP classes are dominated by students who are white or Asian and come from middle class families. When you get to the senior, year, what we thought was, you bring everybody back together again. [In APEG] when we are talking about power and responsibility of citizens, it felt to us that everyone should be in the room together. That’s why we did not want to have AP at the senior level.”

Student Response

One student currently taking APEG is Ron Miasnik.

“I’m really happy that there is a class combining economics and government; the topics are extremely interconnected, and the class format ensures we don’t see them as two separate entities,” Miasnik said.

Like Miasnik, who said he is interested in majoring in one of the two subjects, seniors seeking depth over breadth for either economics or government can take advantage of this AP class.

“I decided to take APEG because I hadn’t taken an AP social sciences before and I was interested…[I] wanted to be in a class where people were genuinely interested in learning economics,” said Allie Coyne, an APEG student.

Slightly over half of the students who completed the APEG course last year took the corresponding AP exams. The passing rate (score of three or higher on a scale of five) was 91% for the AP Macroeconomics exam, with an overall average score of 3.72. The passing rate for the AP U.S. Government and Politics exam was 74%, with an overall average score of 3.26.

The 2015-16 class earned an average 4.18 weighted GPA and 3.82 weighted GPA for the first and second semesters, respectively.

According to Kristin Cardenas, one of the APEG course teachers, “[students]did not do as well as we thought they would [on the AP U.S. Government and Politics Exam due to]some of the nuances of AP test questions and what the college board is looking for.”

To better prepare students for the AP U.S. Government and Politics Exam this year, Cardenas and Hancock are giving students more opportunities to practice with College Board questions.

Challenges in the Classroom

With Macroeconomics, Cardenas explained how students can have a hard time learning a subject in which they have “little prior knowledge.”

“We adopt a different way of learning. Economics doesn’t fit into the traditional scope of humanities or hard sciences—Macroeconomics sort of combines the two but doesn’t satisfy either,” Miasnik said.

In addition, some students were surprised to find that, due to the nuances and complexities of the economy, many formulas and principal concepts cannot be easily applied to real-world scenarios.

“Sometimes, concepts are super complicated that lead to a lot of what-if questions, and in order to do well on the AP exam, you have to not question that stuff, even if it may seem contradictory,” senior Julia Rogers said. “[You have to] learn to find a balance between asking questions and accepting theory as fact.”

Miasnik said he expected more conversation about real-life scenarios and implications to what the class is learning, such as the president election, economic tax policies, and government spending.

“I thought we’d be discussing the real-life much more than we actually are. The concepts we are learning do translate to the real world, but we don’t understand concepts fully to have those conversations,” Miasnik said.

In order to expose students to Macroeconomics earlier on, the APEG teachers plan to incorporate Macroeconomic fundamentals into the new Financial Literacy class which will be taught next year by Marcia Wold, one of the teachers in the math department.

“In terms of government, we mistakenly assumed a higher degree of familiarity with the concepts than students had,” Hancock said. “They have a general sense, but not [of]the nuances and complexities of political science.”

The teachers have aimed to make the class accessible and accommodating to all students.

“Our biggest challenge was [constructing]these two courses so that we fulfill the requirements of College Board, but we create a heterogeneous environment with a class culture [in which]all students could walk in and take the class without feeling alienated,” Hancock said. “[The second challenge was] honoring different learning styles in the classroom and still preparing students for AP test.”

Homework Policy

As part of an effort to address these challenges, students in APEG are assigned textbook reading homework for three to four nights a week and are provided optional guided reading questions; but both teachers intentionally do not check or grade the reading homework as part of the class policy to reduce student workload.

Instead, the textbook and guiding questions are offered to students as a resource, but the students can decide how they want to use those tools, which includes when or if they do the reading, and what measures they should take to succeed in the class. The instructors emphasize mastery of the concepts, but according to Hancock, “how you arrive there is up to you.” Student mastery of the concepts is worth 90% of the class grade.

“Homework [is]intended to be an extension, a reinforcement of the learning. We have no interest in giving homework just for homework’s sake. We also want to honor the ebbs and flows of seniors. We have designed the curriculum so that more is being done in class and less homework is being assigned,” Hancock said.

In comparison to the non-AP Economics and Civics class, Hancock said that APEG gives about 25% more homework.

“The flexibility of when you have to understand that content makes it a more palatable course,” Rogers said in reference to the homework policy. “It’s a great first or second AP to take for that reason.”

Students in the class use a variety of strategies, whether it is doing the reading nightly, on the weekend, or doing it all at once some time before the test.

According to Cardenas, “[it]can cause a problem with motivation to do [the homework].”

“A side effect of the policy is [that]students can take advantage of it and not utilize it at all, [which]might turn into bad test scores and not learning the material,” Miasnik said.

When asked if he saw students not doing the homework, Miasnik said yes.

“Because of the leniency, I definitely can see that students are a little bit less invested in the class,” Rogers said.

Coyne, Miasnik, and Rogers all said that the homework policy was overall positive for them.

“Ms. Hancock and I have designed the course with student wellness in mind. We keep our homework reading schedule very reasonable and try not to have problem sets or assessments around the more stressful time of year for seniors. We truly believe any senior could take, and succeed in, APEG,” Cardenas said in an email.

]]>http://mvhsoracle.com/daily-broadcasts/tuesday-december-6-2016/feed0Dance Spectrum Winter Show 2016http://mvhsoracle.com/featured/dance-spectrum-winter-show-2016
http://mvhsoracle.com/featured/dance-spectrum-winter-show-2016#respondSun, 04 Dec 2016 02:14:19 +0000http://mvhsoracle.com/?p=8876Dance Spectrum’s December 2016 gym show. Dance Spectrum will have their spring show at the Foothill College Smithwick Theatre on May 5, 6, 7.